Ann Coulter is speaking at CPAC as I write. As is typical, she gave a brief speech full of her usual witticisms, including a few brilliant attacks on Al Gore’s green hypocrisy. All was good. Untill the last few seconds, when she launched into a joke about John Edwards.

Here’s what she said…..”I’d say something about John Edwards, but if you say ‘faggot’ you have to go to rehab.”

I’m no fan of John Edwards, but that’s just a stupid joke. It’s over the line. The laughter it generated across the room was more than a little annoying.

Last year it was “raghead.” This year it’s calling John Edwards a “faggot.” Two years in a row, Coulter has finished up an otherwise sharp CPAC routine with an obnoxious slur that liberals will fling at conservatives for years to come.

I guess you could say that Ann loves to shock us, but at this point, who’s shocked? She obviously can’t behave well enough to attend a respectable political gathering. It’s not a lack of intelligence. It’s an indifference to self-control and a preening sort of narcissism that compels her to need the spotlight, even if it’s unflattering.

That pretty much says all one needs to about Ann’s stupidity and rabidness.

But let me offer this observation: I have no doubt that Ann’s remarks will make all of the national news networks and will be endlessly repeated. Fine. They should be assailed.

But why the complete silence by the same networks on the Leftist Bloggers cheering the attempted assassination of the Vice President of the United States?

I know, I know….consistency and ethics are too much to ask for from our news media these days. Meanwhile, Ann Coulter can go away.

At some point, Republicans will need to get over their issues with homosexuality. Regardless of whether one believes it to be a choice or a hardwired response, it has little impact on anyone but the gay or lesbian person. We can argue that homosexuality doesn’t require legal protection, but not when we have our front-line activists referring to them as “faggots” or worse. That indicates a disturbing level of animosity rather than a true desire to allow people the same rights and protections regardless of their lifestyles.

I’d like to think that this blog, in its attempts to dialogue with the conservative community, has helped in the moderation of the views of gays in America as is reflected in Capt. Ed’s comments.

That Gay Conservative. A great current post about how Democrats dealt with illegals is featured there now!

And this is an oldie, but goodie….

Confederate Yankee. Rob has been all over the fake AP source in Iraq for months and has gotten great first-hand comments back from US and Iraqi military sources (actual real people), as well as the dis-Associated Press itself.

As Anna Nicole is buried today, and Leno makes jokes about JetBlue or rats at KFC… it is important to remember what is really important in our world today: Our way of life is threatened by a worldwide Islamic extremist movement.

Too many of us these days are too willing to wish that 9/11 never happened…. or to invent the reasons and facts about why and how it happened. We want the world to be the way it was on September 10, 2001. But that world was a false one since the War on America had already been declared by Islamic radicals over two decades earlier. Our people and our government just didn’t face the facts until the Towers fell.

So in our understandable effort to go back to the days we perceived as “simpler” or “safer”… I’d like to remind all of us that “The Price of Freedom is High.”

Last week, as Congress postured over President Bush’s plan to increase troop strength in Iraq, I asked an Army sergeant who I ran into about his views on the issue. His answer was simple and straight to the point: The price of freedom is high.

The sergeant, home from his second tour in Iraq, said, “There is a price to freedom, sir, and I have seen it paid. Americans have forgotten what brought us to this place.”

What “brought us to this place” was not a rush to judgment nor a president who lied. It was, plain and simple, terror brought to our doorstep. It was the intelligence estimates of Russia, France, Great Britain, Israel, Germany and the Clinton administration that decided Saddam Hussein was a growing threat.

To be sure, the situation in Iraq is difficult and, without a doubt, mistakes have been made in the strategy and execution of this war. But mistakes in war planning should not make Americans lose sight of the overall strategic goal in the global war on terror; just ask that Army sergeant.

While congressional leaders push each other out of the way to get to cameras, that action has an unintended effect: Their constituents are swayed by this lack of support. Worse, insurgents in Iraq and terrorists in Afghanistan hang on every word. Every comment about withdrawal emboldens our enemy, especially when it comes from those in high places. Every congressional call for withdrawal is gleefully greeted by the bomb-makers fueling the insurgency. Al-Qaeda is emboldened by the words of those wanting to turn this struggle of our generation into a squabble for political advantage.

As our leaders bicker, Rome burns. America cannot take its eye off our most important goal: killing those radicals who want to kill us. The world is a dangerous place, and unless our enemies are destroyed, the world reserved for our children and grand- children may become annihilated. The stakes are that high. Americans must redouble their efforts in Iraq, no matter the adversity.

The Army sergeant, those who volunteered to wear the uniform with him, our children and our future as the land of the free depend on our ability to rise to a challenge as our fathers did before us and confront the evil of our time.

So as you watch an untalented, drugged up plastic person being buried on live TV today…. I thought it was important to remember what the real stakes in our REAL WORLD are all about.